1) LEAST Signing Brian McCann to a 6 year, $100 MM deal that the Sox would regret after 2 years (THANK YOU YANKEES!)

2) Signing Salty to a 3 year, $30+ MM deal

3) Signing Pierzynski to ANY contract

I would rather the Sox signed Buck, who is much better defensively, but can't hit a lick. I don't see how Lavarnway wouldn't have been a better one-year stop gap.

I would think that this is a one year deal and is probably for $7 MM plus. Yikes.

This is a brilliant signing. They want a one year bridge to the youth and he is perfect . Salty wanted more then 2 years and struck out way to much hitting behind Napoli ( another high strikeout guy). If our pitching wasn"t as stellar in the post season , along with 3 big hits, it would have been a totally different year. I am not saying the Sox were not the best team, but just think about how many things had to go perfect to win this year. I enjoyed Salty and think he fit in nicely with the Sox last year and added to the teams chemistry very very nicely, but at the same time the Sox with 2 good catching prospects ( both rated better defensively, with a good ceiling offensively) had to make this move.. AJ is a perfect one year bridge. I like this signning very much.

A.J. Pierzynski is a strong pickup on a one-year deal, but I'm somewhat surprised in light of luxury tax concerns that the Red Sox committed $8.25 million of the 2014 payroll at catcher when other holes remain.

They still have about 24 million left. Like many people I think they will increase that by trading Dempster or Peavy.

Ben has got the numbers crunched, I'm pretty sure about that.

The entire rotation expcet Doubrant is tradeable

Peavy and Dempter - grossly overpaid

Buck - fragile and optimal time in his contract

Lackey - sell high and in 2015 he is most likely to complain about earning the league min

The manager didn't want Salty back as evidenced by the benching in the WS. The guy can't throw and he is NOT a clutch player as evidenced by the throwing gaffes in the WS!

One throw could have been caught.

Salty had some big hits at the end of 2013, including a walk-off hit in the ALCS.

He had one of the team's best OPS in Late & Close situations in 2012.

Moon... you are painting Salty to be clutch and the stats paint a very different picture. They statistically show that he is a mistake ball hitter and gets taken advantage of by more advanced pitchers. I will give both examples from this year as well as his career numbers. I took these from my earlier post about an hour ago.

Would of been happier if the Sox asked Varitek to come of retirement than this...

i said the same thing when i saw this deal. No clue how AJP is defensively but i know he stinks at the plate and offers virtually nothing in terms of getting on base. V-tek can do that and still give you good defense and intangibles.

Better yet, they could have signed Salty for 3/21 like Miami just did. Shaking my head.

Would of been happier if the Sox asked Varitek to come of retirement than this...

i said the same thing when i saw this deal. No clue how AJP is defensively but i know he stinks at the plate and offers virtually nothing in terms of getting on base. V-tek can do that and still give you good defense and intangibles.

Better yet, they could have signed Salty for 3/21 like Miami just did. Shaking my head.

After spending a bit of time comparing the two, AJP is Ross. They both have almost identical CERA (catchers ERA) for their careers. Both about a half point lower than Salty.

Yes AJ doesn't walk much, but he also doesn't strike out much. He struck out 14% of the time last year compared to 29% of salty. He has been remarkably healthy through his career playing in at least 114 games every year since 2001. That is the difference between him and Ross... he has shown the ability to stay healthy and bear the brunt of catching duties.

I will take two Ross type catchers on the team and so will Farrell as he showed his preference in the World Series. Perfect bridge catcher for one year as they didn't see a future with Salty and saw the entire pitching staff improve drastically when Ross caught.

Steamer also projects a 2014 WAR* of 2.1 in 113 games for A.J. Pierzynski, 2.9 in 146 games for Jarrod Saltalamacchia and 2.2 in 97 games for Ryan Hanigan.

I'm not sure Pierzynski was the first choice of the Red Sox at catcher.

* Wins Above Replacement as reported at FanGraphs

I have addressed this before, but WAR is skewed because of projected innings played.

Salty has exactly one season when he has played 470 innings and it was last year with the Red Sox. The second most innings was two years ago on the Sox with 448 innings.

AJ has not had a season where he has played less than 497 innings since 2002. The most innings AJP has ever caught in a season was 570.

Steamer projects AJ to have 447 innings and Salty to have 599 innings next season. Sooo steamer projects Salty to catch more innings than AJ has ever in a season next year... I don't think so. If you skew back the numbers to be an even number of innings caught, the WAR is within .1 win.

Took me a bit of stat searching myself as well Moon to see that we got a similar offensive player, but a much stronger defensive player on a one year bridge deal. They have four catchers on the 40 man roster as it stands, AJ P, Butler, Lava, Vasquez. Out of the four, I think the tide is swaying towards Vasquez as the main man of the future right now.

Haven't read all 7 pages but the most important facts about this deal to me are that it is a one year deal and AJ has a history with Nieves who obviously lobbied for him over Salty. Since Salty has apparently signed a very reasonable $21/3 deal he obviously was not trying to break the Sox' bank. The Sox simply didn't want him back.

Haven't read all 7 pages but the most important facts about this deal to me are that it is a one year deal and AJ has a history with Nieves who obviously lobbied for him over Salty. Since Salty has apparently signed a very reasonable $21/3 deal he obviously was not trying to break the Sox' bank. The Sox simply didn't want him back.

That's how I see it, and I thought it became quite apparent when Salty was benched the last 3 games of the WS.

They valued Ross more when it counted, so the writing was on the wall.